Norwegian actress-director Liv Ullmann has decided to shelve her $10.7m (Euros 8.3m) star-studded adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's classic play A Doll's House due to lack of support from the Norwegian Film Fund. 'My life will now go on without A Doll's House,' Ullmann said in a faxed statement (the France-based actor/director refused to be interviewed.)

According to her Norwegian producer and CEO of SF Norge, Guttorm Petterson, he and she had agreed that if financing had not been in place by the end of 2006, they would call off the project. The pair had applied for pre-production funding to the government fund, where one comissioning editor was positive but has since left the fund and another editor wasn't keen to get on board. 'There have been too many negative responses,' Petterson explained.

Ullmann - an Oscar nominee recognised for her cinema contributions by the European Film Academy - began working on the film five years ago for the now-defunct Norwegian production house, Dinamo Story. It was then packaged by producers Petter Borgli and Thomas Backstrom, attaching Swedish international producer Bertil Ohlsson, US producer Jerry Rafshoon, UK's Julia Palau and Matthew Payne.

Cate Blanchett was originally cast in the lead role as Nora, later to be replaced by Kate Winslet, who also had to pull out. Over the years, actors committed to the project have included Annette Bening, Kevin Spacey, Ralph Fiennes John Cusack and Stellan Skarsgard. Ullmann played the part of Nora on stage in the early 1970s; on screen it has been represented by such actresses as Julie Harris, Claire Bloom and Jane Fonda.

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